The green men of the Ghats

UNESCO World Heritage status may have been bestowed upon the Western Ghats but the riders that come with the tag and the resultant battle between environmentalists the prolsquodevelopmentrsquo bodies and the mining mafia are yet to be negotiated We speak to those who have loved the Ghats since long before they become lsquocoolrsquo enough to be heritage material looking for answers Last week 39 sites in the Western Ghats were declared UNESCO World Heritage Sites File Photo lsquoLocals donrsquot like wildlifersquo Over the telephone Jose Louis asks me to imagine the view outside his window on a cloudladen afternoonu00a0The 35 yearold who relocates villagers works with wildlife enforcement authorities and seeks elusive animals for a living is sitting in Kottayam which is to the east of the Western Ghats in Kerala So I picture him looking at impossibly green valleys and add the stunning Paradise Flycatcher to the picture ldquoNow that you mention it mdash I havenrsquot seen that bird in three yearsrdquo says Louis regional head for peninsular India for the NGO Wildlife Trust of India WTI As someone who spent most of his school vacations trying to somehow catch hold of the long tail of the then ubiquitous Paradise Flycatchers Louis doesnrsquot quite like the taste of this realisation Louis is thrilled at the recent inclusion of the Western Ghats in the UNESCO World Heritage List but says he is no fool to reality either ldquoWersquoll now get government sanction to conserve the Western Ghats but the heart of the problem lies with our local communities You think theyrsquod like lsquooutsidersrsquo like the UN to bestow tags on their lsquocash cowlikersquo regionrdquo A male Paris Peacock found in the Western Ghats in Amboli Pic Courtesy Hemant Ogale He is right Not surprisingly just hours after the interview the governments of Kerala and Karnataka opposed UNESCO saying it would affect development work Among the 39 sites that have been given heritage status 20 fall in Keralau00a0ldquoForget politicians even for the locals here wildlife is a lsquoproblemrsquo something thatrsquoll take away their freedomrdquo says Louis remembering a recent spat with a local planter ldquoWe were discussing the UN tag and he said he didnrsquot give a damn about heritage lsquoThis is my heritage and Irsquoll do what I want with itrsquo he said Most planters are trigger happy people and hate animalsrdquo says Louis Another group he adds thinks itrsquos lsquocoolrsquo to have a piece of land in the Western Ghats given the glamour of heritage associated with it Louis says he is neither a biologist not an activist ldquoI am something in betweenrdquo he smilesu00a0He is definitely a heretic for most lsquodevelopmentrsquo junkies in the Western Ghats Till date his maternal uncles who own vast coffee cardamom and rubber plantations in the Western Ghats ask him to ldquokeep conservation out of family discussionsrdquo Hemant Ogale and Jose Louis They couldnrsquot care less that Louis recently worked on a project and relocated five villages in Wayanad to avoid mananimal conflict For him not having the Western Ghats as part of his personal and professional life isnrsquot even an optionu00a0ldquoI spent my childhood with my maternal family in the Ghats and my biggest dream was to have a hill mynardquo says Louis At home Louis had ldquoa crazy pet business I brought black naped hares parakeets common mynas and grasshoppers home and secretly bred honeybees in hives On the days a monitor lizard or a squirrel jumped over my motherrsquos head Irsquod get beaten uprdquo One night after he finished schooling Louisrsquos father entered his room at midnight and told him that he Louis was leaving to pursue Computer Engineering in Baroda Gujarat ldquoJust like that Life was really dull without wildlife but I eventually began rescuing snakes in Baroda toordquo he smiles After six years of working in MNCs Louis gave it up at 24 and began working with wildlife NGOs He joined WTI in 2006u00a0Now Louis says the road ahead is tricky ldquoThe UN status will attract tourists too but if they want to lsquohave a blastrsquo here the region will suffer miserablyrdquo A Bamboo Pit Viper Pic CourtesyHemant Ogale He cites the case of the pilgrim site Sabrimala in Periyar ldquoLook at what the pilgrim tourists have done to the region mdash rivers have become nullahs and E Coli breeds at an alarming rate in the water bodies Even elephant dung there is found to have plastic in itrdquo Louis however lives for what would be small joys for most others in the region At one of the reclaimed sites in Wayanad two of his team members spotted a tiger five days ago ldquoCan you believe that It was a mere 200 metres away from the village we just relocatedrdquo he says ldquoIt all makes it worth saving the Western Ghatsrdquo lsquoDonrsquot cut areas offrsquo For three years Hemant Ogale has been doing something rather peculiar to most people in his hometown Amboli which falls in the Western Ghats He keeps glass tanks full of water and lotuses under trees and sometimes peers curiously insideu00a0ldquoI am just trying to increase the population of the elusive Malabar Gliding Frog in the Western Ghats hererdquo says the 36 yearold founder of the Malabar Nature Conservation Club in Amboli The World Atlas Moth Caterpillar the largest moth in the world Pic Courtesy Hemant Ogale Every year nature lovers trekkers and photographers throng to Amboli for a glimpse of the elusive Malabar Gliding Frog ldquoWhen I was growing up it wasnrsquot unusual to see them hopping all over Amboli but theyrsquove been disappearing since the past five years So I built tanks around my home so their tadpoles can fall into them from the trees they inhabitrdquo Ogale later shifts the frogs near ponds where they were originally sighted years ago to encourage breeding and nestingu00a0Until 2003 Ogale was a mechanical engineer at Pune Growing up in the heart of the Western Ghats was special he says but he wasnrsquot deeply attached to the environment While in Pune he began accompanying naturalists and conservationists on nature trails ldquoI didnrsquot even realise when the corporate ennui got to me and I began thinking of saving the Ghats I left my job came back to Amboli and started the conservation clubrdquo he says Now he works closely with wildlife researcher Varad Giri and next month will publish a paper on a new species of a snake he has helped him discover A Nilgiri Montane Tree Frog ldquoHonestly I donrsquot know how much the UN tag will do for us because the political lobbies are strong but I am doing my bit by documenting species in the Western Ghats which then helps planners and researchers work better I feel I was a bit late to realise what needed to be done for the Western Ghats mdash I was 28 when I started the Club mdash so I regularly visit schools to tell children about the fecund ecosystem they are living onrdquo Ogale says cutting off corridors and areas for conservation will not help the Western Ghats ldquoSites like Koyna Radhanagari and the Kaas plateau mdash which come under the UNESCO sites now mdash are already wellprotected Koyna for instance falls in a wildlife sanctuary But mining is rampant in Sindhudurg which is not in the UN list What about thatrdquo says Ogale u00a0ldquoYou canrsquot chop the Ghats in pieces and speak of conservationrdquo he concludes lsquoThe Ghats are bleedingrsquo If 57 yearold Kalanand Mani is disappointed that not a single site in the Western Ghats in Goa has been included in the 39 serial sites under the UNESCO World Heritage List he doesnrsquot show it Mining in the Western Ghats has ravaged many villages in Goa Pic CourtesyKalanand Mani The activist who was instrumental in organising two marches under the legendary Save The Western Ghats movement in 1985 says he is only thinking about the forthcoming meeting in November organised by his Goabased NGO Peaceful Society which will further discuss fresh activism efforts to save the Western Ghats ldquoIn the Western Ghats in Goa which are 110 km wide and 70 km long 40 km have been destroyed by mining It looks like its insides have been upturned and it is bleedingrdquo he says emotionallyu00a0Mani formed the Peaceful Society in 1983 to speak up against mining and liquor trade in the Western Ghats Technically he is not a local from the Western Ghats but made Goa his home in 1980 because he decided to dedicate his life to fighting for the Ghats ldquoThat makes me lsquolocalrsquo enough donrsquot you thinkrdquo Kalanand Mani addressing a gathering against river pollution in Chaliyar River in Kerala The river originates in the Western Ghats Mani was instrumental in starting the Save The Western Ghats movement in 1985 in Goa Pic CourtesyKalanand Mani Mani was born on the banks of the river Baghmati in Bihar ldquoBack then floods were not something we feared or chastised for wrecking our homes mdash we loved them because they brought us fertile silt and built kachha homes so the flood could have it easyrdquo Manirsquos first childhood memory he says is of taking three dips in the Baghmati during the Chhat Pooja ldquoIt was less than zero degrees Celsius The logic my grandfather would say was to build an intimate relationship with the river no matter whatrdquo he recalls Right from Makar Sankrant in January to Diwali towards the end of the year the Baghmati river was part of every ritual in Manirsquos life ldquoI was later inspired by Vinoba Bhave and joined the Bhudan Movement in 1971 After taking charge of youth wings which helped out during droughts and famines in Bihar I decided I didnrsquot just want to be a Bihari all my life and made Goa homerdquo he says However even for someone who revered floods the destruction of the Western Ghats due to floods in Goa in 1981 struck Mani as rather unnatural ldquoI began looking into the matter and realised it was the first time floods had ever hit Goa and it was all due to mining Thatrsquos when I decided to dedicate my life to mobilising people and creating awareness to save the Western Ghatsrdquo Manirsquos career has not been without victories In the mid80s when tribals in the village of Cotigaon in Goa were displaced to make a wildlife sanctuary he helped them get their land back from the state government ldquoThey told me lsquoGo tell your Goa locals that we live with the wild animals the way they live with their dogsrsquordquo But saving the Western Ghats he admits is a different ball game ldquoIn spite of the march in the rsquo80s and in 2007 the Ghats have suffered because we havenrsquot had a strong leadership that can stay long enough to execute conservation efforts But now with the UN tag we hope that the mining mafias will not run free and loot usrdquo